Nashville Bombing on a COVID Christmas - 12/28/2020

On today's jam-packed episode of the Quick News Daily Podcast, we catch up on all the biggest news from the holiday weekend, including the bombing in Nashville, the psychological effect of COVID stress, an allergic reaction to the Moderna COVID vaccine, and more!

----more----

Find Quick News Daily on your favorite podcast player: https://rebrand.ly/QuickNews 

Sources:

Your brain on cortisol: Why overstressed gray matter is leading us astray in lockdown 
FBI at home of possible person of interest in Nashville bomb 
Women bear disproportionate share of Covid-19 burden, U.N. official warns 
BMC doctor doing well after allergic reaction to Moderna vaccine 
EU, UK unveil vast trade pact set to enter force on Jan 1 
Fact check: Georgia Republicans run more misleading attack ads against Warnock and Ossoff 
Police searching home of ‘person of interest’ in mystery Christmas explosion in Nashville
Suicide bombing suspected in Nashville explosion as investigators search home south of the city
A tip, a hat and a pair of gloves led to ID of Nashville bomber Anthony Quinn Warner; motive remains a mystery 

Note: I do not own the rights to the song "Downtown" by Petula Clark. Please visit petulaclark.com for more info about her and for links to buy this song and more.

(Mostly Accurate) Transcript:

OPEN

Today is Monday, December 28th, and welcome back after the long holiday weekend. I'm hoping you were all able to have a safe holiday, but that you were also able to connect somehow with family or friends, because this COVID fatigue and loneliness is real, make no mistake about it. But wow, we have a ton of stuff to catch up on. Obviously, we'll take on the big stories of the bombing in Nashville and COVID updates, as well as some stories that may have gotten lost in the shuffle but are still important. We don't have a second to waste, so let's get caught up!

NASHVILLE

Now, if you know the show, you know that I hate how the traditional news follows their unwritten rule of putting all of the crime and disasters first; the "if it bleeds, it leads" rule. I still hate that rule, but at the same time, I can't always just ignore those stories in favor of something else because that's my own rule. So, while I am starting with the Nashville story right away, I want to do that because I want to set the record straight. If these things just sit out there, then that's when conspiracy theories start to creep in. Or, maybe those theories are right and the official story is wrong. Whatever the case may be, I want you to have the facts as we understand them today. 

The official story, according to the Nashville chief of police, is that police officers responded on Friday to a report of shots fired when they encountered the RV that was projecting a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes. Police evacuated nearby buildings and called in the bomb squad. The RV exploded shortly afterward, creating a massive fireball and explosion. This took place on 2nd Avenue and Broadway. Upwards of 40 buildings were affected. Also, we have reporting from police that the bomber was playing this song before the explosion. *DOWNTOWN BY PETULA CLARK* Now, maybe it's my age, but that's just a song that the DJ plays at roller rinks. It sounds fun and upbeat, and it is, but when you actually listen to the lyrics, it's basically saying you should go downtown if you're lonely because it'll make you happy, which I think shows this guy's mental state, but we'll get into that in just a bit.

Some of the more unofficial eyewitness testimony and amateur experts online help to color in some of the gaps, but I really want to emphasize that most of this has not been said by officials. 

The real question to me is whether this guy was a professional or an amateur. The weird thing about the whole thing for me is the gunshots beforehand, and why there were multiple. I'm thinking it was one of three things: 1) the bombers trying to commit suicide and shooting each other somehow, 2) one bomber who was bad at committing suicide, or 3) a bad bomber that accidentally started a fire, igniting the ammo and eventually the bomb. I have that third one in there because there were also reports of the police letting some ammo "cook off" after the explosion, meaning they had to let the ammo all ignite before they could move in and put out the fires. That would be the explanation that says the bomber was an amateur. 

I say it might be a suicide for several reasons. First, there was that countdown timer telling everyone about the bomb, with a pretty good amount of time left on it for people to evacuate. Also, it sounds like the timing was pretty much correct, meaning that the accidental fire theory is no good. However, there's also the possiblity that the countdown was to draw people into the street so that the bomb could kill more people. 

Going with the theory that the bomber did legitimately want people to leave, this also happened in a business district (specifically bars and restaurants) with a small number of apartments. The bomber would probably know that, being Christmas, this place would be mostly deserted since all the stores are closed. 

Because there was a huge fireball but a large amount of soot, some folks online were saying that those results would indicate that the bomber probably had a bad mixture or detonator for his bomb. He probably used fuel oil to increase the yield, but that leads to incomplete combustion, which causes the soot and fireball but only a small amount of explosive damage. This means he could have been bad with the making of the bomb, but still good with the detonator, meaning he purposefully detonated it after he heard about the bomb squad on the police scanner, which some people think he was probably listening to. 

It was also right outside a couple of AT&T buildings, so if he really did want people gone, I'm guessing he was a disgruntled AT&T employee who wanted a very memorable suicide, but didn't actually want to kill bystanders, and that he was bad at shooting himself to commit suicide. 

Luckliy for AT&T, their buildings were built during the Cold War. Since they're a communications company, they thought they would be a prime target for a Soviet bombing, so they build these places like bunkers. According to people online who were familiar with that area, AT&T used extra concrete and re-bar during the construction. 

Even though the AT&T building was built to withstand a bombing, it didn't work out perfectly, so they still had some major outages since one of their buildings contained a telephone exchange with network equipment in it. Police emergency systems in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, as well as Nashville’s COVID community hotline and a handful of hospital systems were still out of service as of Saturday, although they had 2 portable cell sites in the downtown area, as well as "numerous additional portable sites being deployed in the Nashville area and in the region". The T-Mobile president of techology, Ray Neville, said they saw service disruptions all the way to Louisville, Knoxville, Birmingham, and Atlanta. 

The company was having a tough time cleaning up and getting things back online because they said that a fire reignited in the building overnight on Friday, and they had to evacuate it again. This also forced safety and structural engineers to be called in, and eventually led to them drilling access holes into the building so they could reconnect the power. 

FEMA released a report on Saturday that related to some tissue that was found on the scene. Honestly, I had no idea that FEMA did that sort of thing, but we'll just roll with it. Anyways, the samples they collected did turn out to be human remains, but at the time, they did not know who the remains belonged to. 

By Saturday, the FBI was already searching the home of a "person of interest". Officially, the house is located in Antioch, a suburb of Nashville, and was found with the help of information they received that was "relevant to the investigation". Some media outlets have already given out the name of the homeowner, but I'm going to skip doing that because that's what freaks like this are after. They're narcissists, they're the victims in their own minds, and they desperately want someone to notice them. Sure, this guy is probably dead, but if the news didn't make them so famous, I don't think as many people would be committing these crimes. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said they started looking into this guy based on a tip from the public about a car of his, which contained a hat and gloves with DNA on them, so they matched that up with the remains found at the scene of the bombing. 

What I will say is about the bomber is that he is (or was) 63 years old, and police said that they were not looking for any other person in connection to this, so he operated alone. There was a copycat that was arrested yesterday, but he didn't have a bomb or anything, he was just playing a countdown message like the one the real bomber was playing. 

The bomber's dad worked for AT&T at one point, so that might have something to do with this. The bomber himself was an IT guy with experience in electronics and alarm systems. One of the neighbors described him as "kind of low key to the point of, I don’t know, I guess some people would say he’s a little odd.” Honestly, to me, that description sounds like this guy was normal and kept to himself. The way that neighbor said "I guess some would say he's odd" sounds like this reporter was asking leading questions and trying to get the answer they wanted. They want things to be neat and tidy and for this guy to fit the mold of the Unabomber or someone like that, so be careful when you hear things like that. 

The team at the Associated Press found that satellite images from May 2019 showed that a vehicle similar to the RV that exploded was in the backyard of this house. The AP also said that their reporter on the scene didn't see the vehicle anywhere on the property during the search. 

The last thing that points to this guy being the bomber is that court records show that he transferred the ownership of his property to someone with a Los Angeles address on November 25th, so it sounds like he was definitely planning on this for a while. 

COVID

Let's get a quick COVID update. Specifically, it's an update on the vaccine, and the headline you may have seen about a Boston doctor who had an allergic reaction after taking the Moderna COVID vaccine. However, it's important to know the context of the situation and what led to this. 

They didn't say how old he was, but they did describe him as "geriatric", which is a description you don't hear very often in these news articles. But in addition to his age, the doctor also had a history of allergic reactions. 

His reaction started about 6-7 minutes after he had taken the vaccine, when his heart rate jumped all the way up to 150 (he mentioned his usual heart rate is around 75). Then he felt a tingling or numbness in both his throat and his tongue before using his EpiPen. The staff then rushed him over to the ER. He was then treated and released. 

The doctor was actually the one who talked to the press, so I'm even more confused why they didn't get his age. It's not like they had to worry about HIPAA or something if he's the one giving out the info. In any case, he said "If (people) know they have the severe allergy, take the vaccine in the right setting, in a hospital setting, so at least there is appropriate care as needed". 

Officially, this is the first case of an allergic reaction to the Moderna version of the COVID vaccine, althought the company says that they're still investigating the case through their internal safety reporting system. Again, I'm no doctor or scientist, but the fact that it's happening to people for both vaccines makes me think it's an ingredient in the vaccine, not the COVID part itself. I don't know the specifics, but from what I understand, they have to bond the virus to some protein in order for your body to take it as a threat and fight it, and that protein is what's found in eggs; that's why folks with an egg allergy can't usually take the flu shot, although now they've come out with non-egg based flu shots. My guess is that because it's so new, they don't have that option here, so people who usually take the special flu shot are still getting the COVID vaccine, which is why these are flaring up. 

FACT CHECK IN GEORGIA

I still haven't talked that much about the special Senate election in Georgia, but I do want to highlight some things from a CNN article. They ran a fact check on some highly misleading ads that were run by the Republicans, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. 

The first is about an ad from Loeffler that attacks her opponent, Reverand Raphael Warnock. The ad takes clips out of context to suggest that Warnock wants to release people from prison, no matter what they're in prison for. In reality, the full quote is "Marijuana is seen as an illegal substance. It's a terrible irony, and we feel it, that right now in America, there are some folk who are becoming billionaires for selling the same stuff that's got our children locked up all across America. Where is the justice? It's not enough to decriminalize marijuana. Somebody's gotta open up the jails and let our children go." 

So, no, he's not advocating for releasing everyone. He's simply suggesting that marijuana offenses should not be keeping people in prison. 

As for David Perdue, he's running an ad about Jon Ossoff that makes it sound like Ossoff could be federally investigated the minute he's elected to the Senate. They say that because he didn't include payments from a Hong Kong media company and from Al Jazeera in his Senate financial disclosure forms. 

First of all, Ossoff is the CEO of a company that makes investigative films, so it's not hard to figure out why foreign media companies are giving money to another media company. Second, Ossoff filed an amendment to his original forms this past July that disclosed 11 more payments from media companies, and Perdue has filed his own amendments in the past (they're common among Seantors in general). Third, it was the Georgia Republican Party that asked for a Senate Ethics Commitee investigation, but anybody can send a letter to that committee. I could send a letter and ask for Barack Obama to run for a third term; it's just not a serious challenge. There is no evidence that any investigation has started. And finally, attacking him specifically over the payments from Hong Kong and Al Jazeera? Come on Republicans, you have to try harder than that. It's just so predictable that they'd attack Asians and a company with a name from the Middle East. I guess you have to meet your quota to be a racist somehow. 

COVID STRESS

Back to the topic of COVID, I read this article on NBC News about some of the psychological effects of this extended period of social distancing and not going out. Dr. Robert Lustig from UC-San Francisco says that prolonged traumatic stress, also called toxic stress, which is what I'm sure we've all had at some point during this pandemic (if not throughout the pandemic). Dr. Lustig says that this type of stress releases the stress hormone cortisol into our brains for a long period of time, which sort of tranquilizes our prefrontal cortex. 

In English, this long-term, chronic stress makes the part of our brain, that controls our impulses to reward ourselves, weaker. 

Going back to more technical terms, Dopamine is the hormone that makes us feel rewarded; it makes us feel good. The prefrontal cortex keeps this hormone in check, so when that part of our brain is weakened, that dopamine basically turns into an out-of-control drug addict who just needs more and more and more. 

So what does this look like during this quarantine period? Dr. Lustig says it causes us to turn to chemical rewards (cocaine, heroin, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, etc.), or behavioral rewards (shopping, gambling, internet gaming, social media, etc.). Maybe it's just because I'm trying to rationalize myself, but isn't it just a bit extreme to be mentioning sugar in the same sentence as cocaine, heroin, and alcohol? I'm sure that chemically, they're just as addictive and all that, but if you overdose on sugar one time, you might just feel sick, whereas you can overdose any time when you take heroin, no matter the amount you take. Also, you can have sugar everyday of your life and probably be okay; let me know how it goes if you take cocaine everyday of your life, but I digress. 

There were some pretty notable stats in this article. First, total cookbook sales increased by 15% through the first 9 months of the year, but bread-based cookbook sales grew by 145% (bread contains carbohydrates, which are a sugar; I'm not trying to talk down to anyone, I just probably wouldn't have made that connection myself if they didn't say it). At the same time, vegetarian and other "healthy" cookbooks saw their sales decrease in March and April. 

When it came to shopping, this year's Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history, not just the history of Cyber Mondays. This year, people bought $10.7 billion worth of stuff. Just as a side note here, the article uses this as proof that we're searching harder for gratification this year, but in reality, I'm sure Black Friday numbers were way down this year. It's not like people spent a ton on Black Friday and Cyber Monday just because they liked clicking "Place Order", they just didn't feel safe going into stores, so I kind of call BS on this one. 

One of the sets of stats that was most surprising to me was the section on alcohol. In April, online alcohol sales were more than 500% higher than last April's online sales (although, again, a large reason for this is probably just that people didn't want to go to stores and more places offered alcohol online). One stat that seems very real to me is the tendency for women to be the most vulnerable to stress drinking during quarantine. The article says that this is mainly due to insecurity in their jobs and increased social isolation. Women's jobs were 1.8 times more vulnerable during the COVID crisis than men's jobs, and a study from July showed that women made up 39% of the worldwide workforce, but they were also responsible for 54% of the global job losses. Worldwide, 743 million, with an "m", girls have been forced out of school. When you combine all that with the facts that moms were also disproportionately asked to be homeschool teachers for their kids and violence against women increased since everyone is confined with each other, it's easy to see why alcohol is a cheap way to escape these awful circumstances. 

The last group of stats I want to go over relates to smoking. In recent years in the U.S., tobacco sales have been decreasing. However, these numbers started to stabilize from March through October. These companies think this is due to the stress, sure, but also the fact that some Americans actually had a lot more disposable income from doing fewer social activities and getting those stimulus checks. At first, I thought this was a really dumb way to cope with a pandemic that mainly attacks your lungs, but then I realized it's just more sad because people are so desperate to deal with the stress that they'll actually do something that they know will hurt them if they get the virus (well, it just hurts them in general, but even more so with COVID). 

So, when it comes down to it, the real question is: "Why do we do these things that are unhealthy if we know that they won't make us happy for very long?"     

Professor Laurie Santos of Yale University says that our brains are wired to make a difference between "wanting" things and "liking" things. She says "Wanting is a motivational process. Liking is how you're going to feel when you get it." 

Basically, the best analogy is actually part of this article. Santos is saying that "wanting" is like eating vegetables, but "liking' is like a really good cheeseburger and fries. We all would like to be healthy, but we want the food that actually tastes good. She says that "we don't have 'wanting' for the things that are going to work", and that we also don't realize that these social interactions, no matter how small they are, are what is missing in our lives. 

She closes out the article with two important quotes. First, she says that "buying new material possessions just simply doesn't make us as happy as we think. In fact, we'd be better off spending money on other people. Doing nice things for others seems to be actually a thing that makes us happy over time". Then, she goes into why we should all be looking forward to the end of the pandemic on a psychological level. She says "After lockdown, we're going to get these amazing fresh starts on the routines we have, how we interact, who we interact with. It really will give us opportunities to build in more positive habits and use what we learned during this time to create a more nutritious life for ourselves."

So, that was an extended dive that I haven't done in a while on this show, if ever, but I thought it was important. Maybe you're feeling these things or noticing these things about yourself and you feel guilty. I think the big thing to take away is that so many other people are going through this exact same thing, especially if you listen to this show, because you're more likely to be taking all of these safety precautions seriously. Everyone has to do it their own way, but I think we should be doing pretty much whatever we need to get through this, and focus on setting goals or something for when we're vaccinated and can get on with our lives.